To do the classic pushup properly, it is necessary to perform the below steps:

Lie on your stomach.

Extend the palms of your hands oh the ground, level with your shoulders.

Keep your back straight throughout the process. Posture is very important during pushups to avoid injury. Especially to work the arms and core.

Lack of good posture during exercise can cause lumbar problems. (This is the second most common cause of medical visits according to theSpanish Journal of Rheumatology.)

With the arms, begin lifting the body until you have straightened the entire length of the arm. Remember that the elbow should not lock once you have completed the extension. This will generate unnecessary tension.

Lower the body by folding the arms until you reach the starting position. The chest should touch (and brush) the ground when it comes down, but should not be a weight support. Supporting your body weight with your chest or belly reduces the effectiveness of the push-up.

When the chest touches the ground, your pelvis should be in the air and your gaze should be to the front.

Every time you hit the ground, it counts as one repetition

Recommendations before starting to do pushups

Prepare your wrists

Before starting your pushups, it’s a good idea to prep your wrists. You can lie face down with your arms outstretched and move your body back and forth to work them.

If you begin to feel pain during your workout, your wrist may be warning you that something is wrong.

Either it’s too much for the joint or you’re not used to supporting the weight of your body. Or you may need to improve your technique.

Breath between repetitions

During pushups, many muscles used in the breathing process can become tense. Working the pectoral muscles and keeping the abdomen static can restrict breathing.

Thus, you must breathe at the end of every repetition to avoid unnecessary dizziness and to give your muscles oxygen.

Don’t hesitate to use your knees when necessary

It may seem easy, but maintaining the proper technique while doing knee pushups is not easy.

Try using your knees. You will see a small reduction in weight, but the intensity stays at a good level.

How do you support your arms and legs during pushups?

Lower limb support

The higher the support of the lower limbs, the more force we are moving towards the arms.

This involves more work for our upper body muscles. Particularly the shoulder muscles.

Conversely, if the feet are lower in height than the hands, this reduces the weight the arms will work.

Also, consider that you can vary how much your abs work. This depends on the distance between your hands and lower limbs (feet or knees).

The current strength of your abdomen will dictate which push-up variation you can start with.

Support your hands and arms

Each position of the arm will help you to work certain muscles.

If you keep your hands close together, you can do a diamond push-up. If you keep them wider apart, you can do an open push-up.

Keep your elbows close to the body and you’ll work the triceps and dorsal muscles harder.

As your elbows move from the body, this will increase the work of the shoulders.

The traditional way of supporting the hands is always with the palm extended on the ground. This puts less strain on the wrist.

If you’re starting out, avoid pushups on your fingers (as we see in movies!). It’s easy to injure yourself this way when starting out.

Once you define the support of your hands, you must look at where the fingers point. This is also important to know which muscles are used during the push-up.

If the fingers point towards the middle, the pectorals will work more. But the bending with the inverted hand (the fingers facing your feet) will work much more on the biceps.

Increase Difficulty

To increase the difficulty of the exercise you can choose an unstable surface. This adds an extra effort on your balance and the muscles work much more. Also, the core works to keep you from falling.

You can also do pushups with one hand. Or, try pushing up with enough force to get both hands off the ground. When they make contact again, complete the push-up.

Common pushup mistakes

Maintaining the correct technique is not easy.

Here is a list of the most common mistakes people make when doing pushups:

Leave the lower limbs close to the ground and just raise the torso and shoulders. If you can’t keep your back straight: focus on doing a single well-done repetition instead of ten which can provoke damage to your back.

Moving up so fast that you do not extend your arms. This keeps the arm muscles under continuous pressure, which can hurt you. The same thing happens when you over stretch your arms and lock your elbows. You can injure yourself when you try to bend your arm again.

Control the movement of your head. You can look forward if the chin is level with your chest. If it is above, you can generate too much tension and you’ll feel stiff the next day.

Not doing the full movement. One of the most common mistakes is only moving the body a few centimeters lower and not extending your chest to the ground. Yes, you can do more repetitions, but you are working a very small section of muscles.

Pushups for Beginners

To get the most out of pushups, it is best to recognize at what level you are at. Don’t start doing advanced pushups from the beginning. Start with beginner pushups until you feel comfortable to further advance. Here is a list of pushups great for beginners.

When you reach the bottom push up off the ground with enough force to separate the arms and feet from the ground.

Cushion the fall with the arms flexed to start another push-up.

Pushup Workout ‘To the One’

For this pushup training session, we’ve chosen ‘To the One’.

For those who don’t know about To the One, the session goal is to decrease the number of repetitions each round. You start with 10 repetitions a round and decrease until you just have one. If you’d like to know more, you can read our ‘To the one’ guide.